Saturday, 10 February 2007

So my power was turned off...

So I rushed home the other night after work to clean my apartment for Fin and Beau who were coming over for a cuppa at 8pmish. I unlocked my door and flicked the kitchen light switch to turn the light on.... but nothing happened. I flicked it again and still nothing. I figured, hey, it's probably just the light bulb so I tried all the other lights in my apartment but none of them worked!!!

As I headed back outside (my place was pitch black) I noticed some mail in the letterbox, one of which was from the electrical company but it didn't look that important, just a receipt. They send you receipts all the time in Japan just to let you know how much you're using gas, water and power. You can't really do anything with them, they're just for your record. As my power was out though, I decided to have a look at it. There was about 40cm of kanji and at the top in English was "Termination of Power Notice". Browsing through the Chinese characters (which I can't read) I saw the price "1436 Yen". They'd cut off my power for 1400 Yen?!?!

I called the number and asked for an English speaker. The guy on the end spent 10 minutes humming and aring (in English) about how his English isn't that good and that he'll try to find someone who can speak English better. After waiting some more, he came back and just decided to do it himself (his English was fucking fine!) and this is where the frustration starts.

I told him my name and telephone number and he looked up my details (I was actually surprised they had a computer instead of good ol' filing cabinets) and told me I didn't pay November's electricity bill. I told him I had paid December and January's and asked him why November's simply hadn't been added onto those. He told me it isn't done like that.

Fine, whatever. The thing was though, they hadn't sent me a bill to pay November's bill since, well, NOVEMBER. I asked him why not and he told me "Please pay the bill". I said "I don't have a bill" he said "Please pay the bill". I told him (blood pressure rising) "I have a receipt but NO BILL!". He tells me that "You should pay the bill.".

I remained calm and yelled at him "I... HAVE.... NO... BILL!!!". He told me to... you guessed it! "Pay the bill".

So I asked him "How? Where?". He told me to go to a convenience store and pay it (as you do in Japan) but I only had a receipt and NO BILL. I asked him if I could pay with the receipt and he said no, but "Please pay the bill."

This is where I lost it and just yelled at him and then due to Vodafone (sorry, Softbank)'s brilliant reception, my mobile cut off so I had to ring again, get put onto a different guy and do this whole 20 minute conversation all over again.

Eventually the new guys said that a man will come around to my place and I can pay him. I was really impressed with this. In a country where ATMs have a closing time I was fully expecting them to tell me to wait until after the weekend. Kudos TEPCO!

So I hung up the phone and raced inside to find some candles I had leftover from Christmas and lit them up to light the place as my friends were arriving any minute. Luckily the electrical man arrived within minutes and I paid him the money and he turned the power on. I asked him why my power had been cut off when the company didn't send me a bill to pay it with! I would have paid it had the given me a bill to pay.

"Please pay the bill."

Grrr... eventually I got out of him that if I didn't have a bill I had to ring them number on the receipt and ask for one to be sent out. Funny thing was, Fin arrived at that moment and realised he had been getting a lot of receipts and didn't know what to do with them either.

A great system you've got here electrical company!

I told the man how unhappy I was with this "service" and asked if they could change it as there are obvious faults in the system they use.

He left and I already had the feeling that despite all of my feedback they wouldn't change anything. This is Japan where the logic is that "We do it because it's like this" instead of creating a system based on practical studies and feedback.

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Labels: apartment, japan